


The dreadful summit of the cliff

by orphan_account



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Anne being emo, Episode: s03e09 A Dense and Frightful Darkness, Gen, Introspection, No Plot/Plotless, and basically she's at a Disney princess level 'one with nature', i don't know what this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-18 01:02:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21502696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: After Anne learns Gilbert already went to Charlottetown, she finds herself wandering.
Kudos: 14





	The dreadful summit of the cliff

**Author's Note:**

> Basically Anne being broody during that scene at the cliff. Some word vomit I was feeling. *shrug emoji*
> 
> Title is a completely out of context line from Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 4 (as in, in the case of this work it's very much literal, and in the play it is obviously not).

Anne wished she could say she left the Blythe-Lacroix house with dignity that afternoon, but that would be a lie. The rest of the day saw her wandering the island’s vast landscape without purpose or direction, only the thought of one step in front of the other, away, away, away, until, quite suddenly and not suddenly at all, the sun was low in the sky and a haze of clouds and fog threatened to block its light out entirely. She looked down into the crashing waves below, the noise so tempestuous and unforgiving that it nearly drowned her thoughts, and so close at hand that despite the surface being hundreds of feet below, she could picture the swell of water all around her, rising and falling in a dependable rhythm, the icy cold chill down to her very bones like a new baptism.

Here she was once again at the edge of the cliffs that had been the background of so many of her memories since coming to Avonlea—and, ever since the storybook club’s destruction last year, the principal place she would come to be alone. Rarely ever did anyone traverse this way, and on the few times they had, she had ample time to compose herself before they were close enough to address her. Even the wood back home didn’t afford such a luxury, and Anne had lost track of the times she’d been happened upon in the middle of enacting impromptu epic quests or crying her heart out in the hollow of a near-dead tree.

Anne turned her head up to the sky, letting the wind caress her shuddering body, letting the smell of salt and sea consume her senses, letting the slight prickles of rain pepper her like so many of nature’s kisses. The long grasses tickled and scratched across her legs, and she acquiesced, collapsing into it and letting its surround her like a blanket, sighing softly.

Here, she wasn’t Anne of Green Gables, but merely Anne of the island. Just her and the ground beneath her feet. If she emptied her mind enough—and this was one of the rare places where Anne actually found it in herself to do so—she could pretend she was the only one left in existence, standing on top of the world completely at nature’s mercy.

The tears that followed weren’t dignified either, but such was the point: no one was around to make her hide her unhappiness, or temper it, or transfer it into defensive anger as she was so often wont to do. She cried, and cried, and cried, until her whole frame was worn out, until she could barely so much as lift her arm. She was but a weak child, a bird with an injured wing, curled in on herself in the same way she imagined she had been in her birth mother’s womb.

And still, the ocean continued on, as beautifully unforgiving as ever.

“Thanks,” she told it, with utter seriousness.

A soft calm stole over her, and Anne breathed in deeply again. It would all be okay, eventually.

**Author's Note:**

> This is random and isn't much but oh well. I've got other Anne with an E works on the way, but this literally just...appeared when I meant to write something else, and I figured since it doesn't fit with any of those works at the moment I should just publish anyway, cheesy and whatever as it is.
> 
> Find me on tumblr @daisymaximoff.


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